Description
Book SynopsisThis interdisciplinary volume revisits Adorno's lesser-known work,
Minima Moralia, and makes the case for its application to the most urgent concerns of the 21st century. Contributing authors situate Adorno at the heart of contemporary debates on the ecological crisis, the changing nature of work, the idea of utopia, and the rise of fascism. Exploring the role of critical pedagogy in shaping responses to fascistic regimes, alongside discussions of extractive economies and the need for leisure under increasingly precarious working conditions, this volume makes new connections between
Minima Moralia and critical theory today. Another line of focus is the aphoristic style of
Minima Moralia and its connection to Adorno's wider commitment to small and minor literary forms, which enable capitalist critique to be both subversive and poetic. This critique is further located in Adorno's discussion of a utopia that is reliant on complete rejection of the totalising system
Trade ReviewThis compelling collection on Adorno’s aphoristic masterwork snaps it into contemporary focus with a range of essays addressing ‘damaged life’ in the present, from the resurgence of fascism in politics to the colonisation of life by work and the escalation of ecological violence. Adorno, it turns out, has been waiting for us in the twenty-first century. * Nicholas Lawrence, University of Warwick, UK *
Minima Moralia is the exquisite entrée into Adorno’s thought: intense aphorisms that quietly juxtapose and interweave autobiographical reflection, miniatures of sociological critique, and philosophical analysis. The essays in Filar and Irr’s volume are the perfect companion for contemporary readers, pointedly focusing on the bond between the textures of ordinary life and fascism; animality, racism, and anthropocentrism; aphorisms as artwork-like modes of writing that resist the calls instrumental reason and capitalist exchange; and Adorno’s “reflections from damaged life” as the agonized adumbration of life in the Anthropocene. Together these essays reveal Adorno as a challenging and urgent contemporary. * Jay Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, USA *
Table of ContentsForeword by Peter E. Gordon
(Harvard University, USA) Introduction 1. An Adorno for the 21st Century: Introduction Caren Irr and and Diana Filar (Brandeis University, USA)
Part I Thought After Fascism 2.
Minima Moralia and the Contradictions of Post-War Pedagogy Jakob Norberg (
Duke University, USA) 3. Breathtaking Leaps,” or from Doorknobs to Fascism Oshrat C. Silberbusch (author of
Adorno’s Philosophy of the Nonidentical) Part II The Effects of the Aphorism 4. Gesture, Survival, Utopia: Adorno's Senses of Critique S.D. Chrostowska (
York University, Canada) 5. Negative Dialectics, Negative Events: Aphoristic Knowledge as Melancholy Historicism in Theodor Adorno’s
Minima Moralia Wyatt Sarafin (
Harvard University, USA)
Part III A Labor Theory of the Present 6. “The Whole of Life Must Look Like a Job”:
Minima Moralia, Utopian Idleness, and the Capitalocene Clint Williamson (
University of Pennsylvania, USA) 7. Self-Preservation, Self-Destruction Caleb Shaoning Fridell (
CUNY, USA)
Part IV Adorno’s Ecology 8. Adorno and Animality After Auschwitz Andrea Dara Cooper (
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA) 9. Living with Damage: Adorno in the Anthropocene Caren Irr (
Brandeis University, USA) Bibliography Index
